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The earliest known occurrence of this so far is to my knowledge once again "Catholic", if somewhat dubiously so, given that the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique calls the De republica ecclesiastica "a very interesting blend of theses Anglican and Gallican" (vol. 4, col. 1670), and the 2nd edition of the New Catholic encyclopedia, De Dominis himself an "apostate":
In preparing vol. XVII of the Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius I came across a letter which the French scholar Jean de Cordes addressed to Grotius on 9 November 1634 (Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. D'Orville 51). In this letter the source of the adage is mentioned, be it rather vaguely: the works of Marc' Antonio de Dominis (1560-1624), archbishop of Split (Spalato). After some research I have found the device in book 4, chapter 8 of De republica ecclesiastica libri X, London/Hannover 1617-1622)
i.e. “on p. 676 of the first volume published in London in 1617, at the end of chapter 8 of book 4, which treats of the papacy” (H. J. M. Nellen, "De zinspreuk 'In necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas,'" Nederlands archief voor kerkgeschidenis 79, no. 1 (1999): 106, 104 (99-106)). Cf. http://spu.worldcat.org/title/marci-antonii-de-dominis-de-republica-ecclesiastica-libri-x/oclc/476586221. On p. 104 of this article it appears as follows:
Quod si in ipsa radice, hoc est sede, vel potius solio Romani pontificis haec abominationis lues purgaretur et ex communi ecclesiae consilio consensuque auferretur hic metus, depressa scilicet hac petra scandali ac ad normae canonicae iustitiam complanata, haberemus ecclesiae atrium aequabile levigatum ac pulcherrimis sanctuarii gemmis splendidissimum. Omnesque mutuam amplecteremur unitatem in necessariis, in non necessariis libertatem, in omnibus caritatem. Ita sentio, ita opto, ita plane spero, in eo qui est spes nostra et non confundemur.
Now if this plague of an abomination [were to] be cleared away at the root—i.e. see or rather throne of the Roman pontiff—itself, and [if] that fear hanging over the common counsel and consent of the Church (suppressed, of course, by this stone that makes men stumble [(cf. 1 Pet 2:8 in the Vulgate)], and reduced to the ‘equity’ of canon law) [were to] be removed, we would have an equitable atrium of the Church polished and [rendered] surpassingly brilliant by the beautiful gems of the sanctuary. And we would all embrace a mutual unity in things necessary; in things non necessary liberty; in all things charity. This I feel, this I desire, this I do indeed hope for, in him who is our hope and we are not confounded.
It appears in ll. 3 and 2 from the very bottom of p. 676 of the book itself as follows:
vnitatem in necessarijs, in non necessarijs libertatem, in omnibus caritatem.
I would welcome any suggestions for the refinement of the translation I give above.
This was quoted by De Cordes (who claimed to "ay trouvé [it] dans les oeuvres de Dominis") in his letter to Grotius dated 9 November 1634 (above) as follows:
in necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas et in omnibus charitas
(Nellen, 102). Grotius knew De Dominis personally, and, indeed, was in possession of this first volume of the De republica ecclesiastica by 1619 (Nellen, 103). But he wouldn't have been able to track the maxim down on the strength of this vague reference alone (Nellen, 104).
For additional passages in De Dominis' De republica ecclesiastica that give voice to similar sentiments, see Nellen, 104n20: bk. 7, chap. 6, sec. 21 (p. 104); bk. 7, chap. 9, sec. 18 (p. 130); bk. 7, chap. 9, sec. 27 (p. 132); bk. 7, chap. 9, sec. 204 (p. 197); bk. 7, chap. 12, sec. 113 (p. 316).
Would the presence of De Dominis in England go some way towards accounting for the major role played by Richard Baxter (1615-1691) in the dissemination of the maxim several decades later? "The apostacy [(geloofsafval)] of the Archbishop and his flirtation with Anglicanism made him for representatives of the Reformation an important trump card in the religious controversy with Rome" (Nellen, 105)—for as long, at least, as that flirtation lasted. And quite probably longer.
Prior to this ground-breaking article by Nellen (which, he admits, may well be superceded by "the definitive answer" published "in 2065—or perhaps much earlier" (Nellen, 101)), the consensus of more than a century had been that it was the work of Peter Meiderlin (1582-1651) (anagrammatico-pseudonymously Rupertus Meldenius), and appeared for the very first time in the first (i.e. 1626) printing of his Paraenesis votiva pro pace ecclesiae ad theologos Augustanae Confessionis (http://spu.worldcat.org/title/paraenesis-votiva-pro-pace-ecclesiae-ad-theologos-augustanae-confessionis/oclc/34765422):
Verbo dicam: si nos servaremus in necessariis unitatem, in non necessariis libertatem, in utrisque caritatem, optimo certe loco essent res nostrae.
(Meiderlin's Paraenesis was so rare that Friedrich Lücke reproduced it in an appendix to his Über das Alter, den Verfasser, die ursprüngliche Form und den wahren Sinn des kirchlichen Friedenssprüches "In necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas": eine literar-historische theologische Studie (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1850).)
"Meiderlin is [therefore] a disciple of Johann Arndt, but he seeks less to defend the ideas of his master (in whom one can see a precursor of 'Pietism') than to bring an end to the dogmatic rivalries of the theologians of the Augsburg Confession" (Joseph Lecler, "À propos d'une maxime citée par le Pape Jean XXIII: In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas," Recherches de science religieuse 49 (1961): 552 (549-560)).
In Catholic (but also some Protestant) hands, dubiis was substituted for non necessariis [(note also the presence of omnibus rather than, as in Meiderlin, utrisque)], and this had supposedly the effect of extending "the rule of Meldenius . . . to much more than just the necessaria [(for salvation)] and the non necessaria [(for salvation)]", much more than just the "fundamental articles": "the tripartite maxim. . . . [thus] lost its original Protestant nuance, in order to extend liberty to the entire domain of questions debated, doubtful, and undefined [(non définies par l'Église)]" (Lecler, 559-560). There are many helpful references to the literature (but most notably Krüger and Eekhof) in Lecler, who isn't doing much in the way of original scholarship, but mostly summarizing the work of others (Eekhof and Krüger, and, for more than a century total behind them, Bauer, Lücke, and Morin).
But the 1999 article by Nellen has, for now at least, returned this once again to (a dubious) "Catholicism".
"In necessariis unitas, | in dubiis libertas, | in omnibus caritas. | Augustin, dem John Wesley | zugestimmt hätte. | Geoffrey Wainwright | in herrlicher Verbundenheit. | Manfred Marquardt | Cambridge, July 24th,1987". Inscription on title page of a copy of Praxis und Prinzipien der Sozialethic John Wesleys, by Manfred Marquardt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), purchased from Windows Booksellers for the Seattle Pacific University Library on 9 July 2014. "Augustine, with whom John Wesley would have agreed. [To] Geoffrey Wainwright", etc.
Here is a bit more in the way of 20th- and 21-century bibliography, thrown in quite willy nilly as encountered (rather than searched for) after I first posted this on 2 March 2010. I do not claim to have read all that follows, nor that this list is anything even close to exhaustive.
- Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, PA. "And in all things . . ." This month in Moravian history no. 73 (May 2012). Cites Comenius' Unum necessarium (1668): "Servare in omnino necessariis Unitatem: in minus necessarius (qva Adiaphora vocant) Libertatem: in omnibus erga omnes Charitatem."
- Rollmann, Hans. "In essentials unity: the pre-history of a Restoration Movement slogan." Restoration quarterly 39 (1997): 129-139. Credits Peter Meiderlin.
- Burr, Viktor. "Zur Geschichte des Wahlspruches: In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas." In 110 Jahre Unitas-Salia zu Bonn/1847 bis 1957 - Festschrift zum 110. Stiftungsfest des W.K.St.V. Unitas-Salia, der Mutterkorporation des Unitas-Verbandes, edited by Anton Brenig, 7-24. Bonn, 1957.
And here is a grab-bag of allusions, thrown in (here, too) quite willy nilly as encountered:
"All in the church must preserve unity in essentials [(In necessariis unitatem)]. But let all, according to the gifts they have received, maintain a proper freedom [(debitam libertatem)] in their various forms of spiritual life and discipline, in their different liturgical rites, and even in their theological elaborations of revealed truth. In all things let charity [(in omnibus . . . caritatem)] prevail. If they are true to this course of action, they will be giving ever better expression to the authentic catholicity and apostolicity of the church" (Unitatis redintegratio 1.4; Decrees, ed. Tanner, vol. 2. p. 912).
“O God almighty and tender-hearted, . . .
“Forgive us, [we] who have disregarded the presence of your Christ in the poor, the wretched, and the troublesome [(molestis)]”.
Entreaties, Morning prayer, Second Monday of Lent, italics (and translation) mine. Molestus: annoying, bothersome, burdensome, difficult, grevious, incommodius, irksome, troublesome, vexing (and worse).
"OUP has taken to touting the [now] heavily discounted sixty-five-volume hard-copy ODNB as 'a modern classic . . . impervious to technical change'".
Arthur Freeman, reviewing the Oxford companion to the book, in "Rare, cheque and bath: the end of a daunting project that escapes the curse of Wikipedia," Times literary supplement, February 5, 2010, p. 8. The language he reproduces was here (http://www.oup.com/oxforddnb/info/print/), under "Why buy a sixty-volume print set when the dictionary is available online?":
The DNB is one of the most famous books in English. The new Oxford DNB will take its place as a modern classic. In book form it will remain your permanent archive, impervious to technical change, and will be seen as a historical landmark for the next hundred years.
(This ignores the bitter criticism to which the ODNB has been subjected, and in the TLS above all.)
OUP stands, of course, for Oxford University Press, and ODNB, for the Oxford dictionary of national biography.
The TLS subtitle derives from this: "nothing in [the Oxford companion to the book], as far as I can see, is simply parroted from an unverified or unacknowledged source—the curse of Wikipedia and most online cribs, which also affects OCEL" (the Oxford companion to English literature).
"Behind everything, and notwithstanding something like a cosmic scheme of good and evil in conflict, the whig historian has found it possible to reserve for himself one last curious piece of subtlety. He can choose even to forgive the private life of Fox and save his moral condemnation for 'the repressive policy of Pitt.' For of Lord Acton himself we are informed that 'he had little desire to pry into the private morality of kings and politicians'; and it was Acton who told historians that they must 'suspect power more than vice.' The whig seems to prefer to take his moral stand upon what he calls the larger questions of public policy. So upon the whig interpretation of history we have imposed the peculiar historian's ethics, by which we can overlook the fact that a king is a spendthrift and a rake, but cannot contain our moral passions if a king has too exalted a view of his own office. Burke's dictum, which Acton endorses, that 'the principles of true politics are those of morality enlarged,' may contain a world of truth, but it can be dangerous in the hands of the historian. And not the least of its dangers lies in the fact that it can be so easily inverted."
Herbert Butterfield, The Whig interpretation of history, 1st American ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951 [1931]), 128-129 (chapter entitled "Moral judgments in history"). No comfort here for those tempted to reverse this and suspect vice as much as power (since they would be Whiggish, too), but quite true-to-form nonetheless.
(Those tempted to reverse this and suspect vice as much as power would be forgetting that "moral judgments are useless unless they can be taken to imply a comparison of one man with another", that "it is impossible to make comparisons of this kind unless we compare also [exhaustively] the situation in which men find themselves" (123), that "all history [of this sort] perpetually requires to be corrected by more history" (131), and that, in sum, there is no end to the requisite enumeration of the relevant circumstances on the part of the historian qua historian, no end to pure description, no God's-eye view, no "verdict of History" personified.)
Butterfield may well be right about the historian qua "servant of the servants of God [or the Devil], . . . drudge of all the drudges" (130 ff.), but is his role qua responsible agent or person really this sequestrable? And isn't the claim that there can be for us no end to (an ultimately exonerating) pure description a debilitating assumption?
"The heart of the earth has accepted and received the Son of God; and it is from a womb so consecrated, this womb of the 'hellish' depths of human existence, that the saved creature rises up. Not just (not even temporarily) in the Son alone. It is not that he alone descended and so rose again as victor because death could not hold him captive. 'Even now' he is not the firstborn among the dead in the sense that he is even now the only human being to have found the complete fulfillment of his whole human reality. . . . the Son of Man 'cannot' have risen alone. What, we may ask, is really to be understood by his glorified bodily condition (if we take it seriously, and don't spiritualize it into another way of talking about his eternal 'communion with God') right up to the 'Last Day', if meanwhile it should persist all by itself—something which is precisely unthinkable for the bodily condition (though glorified)? So when we find in Mt 27:52 s. that other bodies too, those of saints, rose up with him (indeed even 'appeared'—as he himself did—to show that the end of the ages has already come upon us), this is merely positive evidence from Scripture for what we would have expected anyway, if definitive salvation has already been unshakably founded, death conquered, and a man, for whom it is never good to be alone, has entered upon the fulfillment of his whole being. Hence to try to set aside this testimony from Matthew as a 'mythological' intrusion, or to argue away its eschatological meaning with ingenious evasions—such as that it is merely a matter of a temporary resurrection or even of 'phantom bodies'—would not be in accord with the authoritative voice of Scripture. It is a fact that by far the greater part of the Fathers and the theologians, right up to the present day, have firmly maintained the eschatological interpretation of the text as the only one possible from the exegetical point of view."
Karl Rahner, "The interpretation of the dogma of the Assumption," Theological investigations, vol. 1, God, Christ, Mary and grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst, O.P. (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1961 [1954]), 219-220 (215-227) = "Zum Sinn des Assumpta-Dogmas," Schriften zur Theologie, Bd. 1, 7. Aufl. (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1964 [1954]), 243-244 (239-252). "salvation has already advanced so far historically that since the Resurrection it is completely 'normal' (which is not to say 'general') that there should be men in whom sin and death have already been definitively overcome. Christ's victorious descent into the kingdom of death is precisely not just an event belonging to his private existence, but a saving Event, one which affects the dead. . . . And his entry into the eternal glory even of his body does not open up an 'empty space', but institutes a bodily community of the redeemed: however far from being complete the number of the brethren may be, and however little we may be able, with a single exception, to call them by name as those who have been redeemed even in their bodies" (226 = 251, italics mine).
"the idea of Jesus being bodily in heaven in complete bodily solitariness is probably not a coherent conception, certainly not fitting; and not present in Scripture. There is no trace in Scripture of any idea that the Old Testament figures would wait until the last days, along with St. Paul and the other saints, before being taken up into heaven and the very presence of God, there to have the kind of immediacy to the presence of God portrayed in the book of Revelation 21-22--even though before Christ's own Resurrection, the Jewish conception seems to have been only of some kind of earthly paradise. It is the days of Jesus' ministry with the completion of that ministry in the Passion and the Resurrrection that prophets and kings are portrayed as waiting for (Lk 10:23-4; 1 Pet 1:10ff; Heb 11:39-40) so that those that went before might enter into their inheritance with the Church, Jesus 'going (ahead) to prepare a place for you,' in his 'Father's house' where 'there are many abiding-places.' In the Eastern Church, amongst the Old Testament figures, the Patriarchs and prophets have always been thought of as amongst the saints as ones who could pray for us, along with the saints, and not only John the Baptist, Mary's spouse Joseph, Joachim and Anne, as in the modern Western rite liturgies. And, in the iconography of Christ's descent into Hades, he has long been portrayed as triumphantly leading a repentant Adam and Eve as well as a troop of others along with the saintly dead out of Sheol or Hades into heaven with him.
"Christ's bodily ascension to glory gives heaven a bodily aspect making it difficult to suppose that he did not take more than one to be present with him bodily in heaven in the interval before his second coming--for mankind, two does not constitute a complete community."
David Braine, "The Virgin Mary in the Christian faith: the development of the Church's teaching on the Virgin Mary in modern perspective," Nova et vetera: the English edition of the international theological journal 7, no. 4 (Fall 2009): 924, 927 (877-940). Nonetheless, the Assumption proper remains "a special privilege of the Virgin Mary," and has "a rationale and role which removes it from any close analogy to the assumptions of Enoch, Moses, and Elijah in earlier Jewish thinking, each thought of as already bodily in paradise, even before the Resurrection, and perhaps also of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob along with them according to the words of Jesus, or even of the saints or holy ones who were raised up and seen in Jerusalem, of whom St. Matthew speaks" (923).
"A few lights taps on the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling onto the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
James Joyce, "The Dead," Dubliners (Dubliners: text, criticism, and notes, ed. Robert Scholes & A. Walton Litz, Viking critical library (New York, NY: The Viking Press, 1969), 223-224).
